


no better to be safe than sorry

by aetataureate



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Spoilers for Episode: s4e13, showing up in the underworld unannounced as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 03:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18512719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetataureate/pseuds/aetataureate
Summary: The gang mourns. Penny answers a question.





	no better to be safe than sorry

Margo Hanson can’t bring herself to be sad today.

She has Eliot back, is the thing. More than anyone else, Quentin would understand why she can’t be sad, can’t be anything but world-consuming, chest-thumping, eat-your-heart-out-motherfuckers joyful. She hadn’t needed her fairy eye to see the thing between them—she read the note Quentin left for her coronation, and besides that, it had hovered in the air around him, tangible. It was there in the way he had leaned into the Monster, let it touch his hair, let it kiss his forehead like it was something natural. It was there in the way he looked when he talked about saving Eliot first, come what may. Quentin was never a “come what may” kind of guy.

She hopes they were happy in the other timeline. She hopes they ate life alive, that they took every moment they were offered. She hopes the sex was absurdly good. She thanks Quentin for every minute she has with Eliot now, for every second she can be _her_ in a way that doesn’t exist without _him_. She knows Quentin would have been okay with this, the trade. She knows because _she_ would have been. It’s why she respects him, in the end. One king to another.

***

Josh Hoberman thought Quentin seemed like a nice guy. Little tense. Probably could have used a nice bath and a hit of something strong. The thing he can’t stop thinking about, though, is his last meal. They ate it together, technically, standing there in the living room of the Physical kids’ cottage. They didn’t even use the good silverware. He could have—prepared better, maybe, for eventualities. He should start using the good silverware more often. Every day, maybe. It turns out you never know.

Damn, it was good cake though. Food of the gods, literally. He hopes Quentin liked it. Josh would have liked it, as far as last meals go.

***

Alice Quinn is ugly when she’s in love. She’s known this for a very long time, since the day her best friend when she was six made a new best friend who was seven. She knows that she turns into a nasty, snarling thing, built mostly out of rage and jealousy and self-hatred and my-mother-never-loved-me _bullshit_ that shows on her face and in her voice and worst of all, in her actions. Love makes her do things she doesn’t want to do, say things she means deeply and resents even further. Every single minute of her life is proof of that. And yet, somewhere along the way, there was Quentin, who looked at her twisted-up insides and apparently thought _oh, yes, I want to be a part of that_.

They didn’t work, which is the stupidest, most unacceptable part of all of it. Quentin was someone she was never quite ready to give up on, even when she said she was, even when she _proved_ she was. It was always a constant stream of not-now not-finished not-done-yet not- _done_ , and she clung on hard, with teeth and nails sunk into the living proof that someone could keep loving her even after seeing how ugly she was inside. They had to drag her away kicking and screaming. They shouldn’t have, even though it’s what Quentin would have wanted. Did want. Asked for.

She’ll never love again, probably. She doesn’t see how she could. The ugly thing is still there, and now Quentin is not.

So, that part of her life is over.

***

Kady Orloff-Diaz was already in mourning when she heard about Quentin. Everyone seems to have forgotten that.

It doesn’t feel any different, now.

***

Julia Wicker appreciates that they’re all mourning Quentin, she does. She’s glad they can do it together, that everyone is speaking and no one is fighting and they can all sit around the campfire holding hands. But she can’t help but think—she can’t help but _know_ that it’s different for her.

Julia is mourning the way that only family can. She is not mourning the man who died, or the life that was cut short. Julia’s mourning the little boy she sat with under her kitchen table, painting a map of the adventures they would have together in their big and beautiful lives. She’s mourning all the things he imagined they would be, when imagination still had the power of certainty, power that literal magic can’t measure up to. She’s mourning the Quentin who loved spaceships, and the Quentin who was afraid of Batman, and the Quentin who busted his ankle jumping off a swing set and cried for two hours. She’s mourning the Quentin who, when they were too young to understand what it meant, told her late one night that sometimes he didn’t want to be alive, and the Quentin who, twelve years later, caught up with her outside Marina’s apartment one morning and told her he didn’t feel that way anymore. They’re all the same Quentin, a house he built on top of himself, and she misses _all of him_ because she knew _all of him_ and that’s something that hollows you out, when a person you knew all of goes.

He was her brother. She stays until the fire burns down.

***

In the last weeks of his old life, Eliot Waugh felt blessed. He was never as tight with the gods as the locals were—he was never quite _local_ , even after fifty years—but he thanked them for making sure he wouldn’t have to bury his husband. That’s still true, it turns out. There is no body to bury.

When he finds out, he says “oh God” and faints dead away in front of all the nurses and and Dean Fogg and whatever deities there are and Margo. It is incredibly gauche. He blames the trauma and the blood loss and the surgery and the tuna sandwich the Monster ate for lunch, and also Quentin.

He misses Quentin’s body in a visceral way. He knows it, knows him from the inside out, knows how he ages and how he cries and how he shakes when he’s cold. He knows what kind of father he is (a good one), what kind of liar he is (a bad one), and what kind of gardener he is (strangely enthusiastic). He spent a lot of time with the Quentin in his head, in the last however-long, but he isn’t _Todd_. He knows it wasn’t _real_. But even when he thought he wouldn’t make it out, even when it hardly seemed worth it to try, he never imagined he wouldn’t talk to the real Quentin again. Wouldn’t touch him. Quentin would be there at the end of him—it was a sure thing.

 _I’m alive in here_ , he thinks, wildly and into echoing silence. _I’m alive in here but where are you_?

He pictures the last moment he saw his husband, lets his mind tick back to it. Things were happening so quickly. He thinks he slugged him on the shoulder. Sort of—pushed him, maybe. He isn’t sure. He can’t remember.

The beauty of all life. What a fucking joke.

***

They show up in the Underworld, because of course they do. There’s always a way—it’s a shibboleth of their little tribe. Penny Adiyodi decides to save them all some trouble and directs them straight to his workspace. 

He’s already thought about what he’s going to say. They sent Alice and Julia and Eliot, which is good—they’re the right three, the three he needs to tell. If they had sent Kady, he doesn’t know how well his resolve would have held. He might have tried to claw his way up himself. Alice is making that face she’s made ever since Quentin brought her back, like she wants her skin to stretch in some way it can’t anymore.

“We’re here for Quentin,” she says, doing something with her mouth that means she wants him to know she’s not asking his permission. Penny feels a soft spot for her, right under his ribcage, a spark of warmth for the still-alive girl who, despite everything, holds still-alive in the highest possible esteem.

“He’s not here,” Penny tells her.

“We looked in the Mirror Realm,” Alice says. “So, what, he’s in the Seam? Where is he? How do we find him?”

“You don’t,” Penny says. “He’s moved on.” Eliot lets out a sound that’s like a gasp but not, and sits down directly on the floor. He’s almost hard to look at here, too bloody and beating and alive against the washed-out tones.

“So soon?” Julia’s lip is quivering, but her voice is steady. “Can you get a message to him? I—we need to tell him something, it’s important.”

“He knows already,” Penny says, and Eliot looks up sharply.

“How do you know?” he asks.

“I showed him,” Penny says. “Before he moved on. He heard you sing. The last living thing he ever heard, he heard you sing.”

Eliot makes a noise that’s horrible and choking, not melodic at all. “And he saw the—”

“He saw the peach. He saw all of it. Last thing on Earth he saw. It helped him, I promise. He knows he saved you. He knows you love him.”

“Was he scared?” Julia asks. Less steady.

“He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay with you. But he was ready. Does that make sense?” Penny tells her, the answer to a question she hadn’t thought to ask yet. Wasn’t sure she wanted an answer to. He watches her chest collapse in a little with relief.

Alice and Julia have to help Eliot up off the floor. They prop him up between them, and it’s almost comical-looking—he’s so long, and he drags. Penny would worry, but he’ll be alright. Penny knows—he read ahead. He puts them in the elevator, presses the right button for them. He stands in front of the doors, and just before they slip close, he says: “He loved you. Still does.”

Then: “I do, too.”

“Tell Kady I said hello.”

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooo, that finale, huh?
> 
> Title is from “Take On Me” by a-ha, a song that I will never hear the same way again, thanks, The Magicians. Many thanks to gracelesso for saving me from myself generally. There is up-to-date contact info in my profile, if anyone wants to discuss, debate, bemoan, appreciate, or just generally yell about this show.
> 
> Questions, kudos, and comments always appreciated!


End file.
